试论《域外小说集》的文章性——由周作人的“翻译文体观”谈起

On the Characteristic of Prose in A Collection of Foreign Stories——From Zhou Zuoren's Viewpoint on Style of Translation

周作人三十年代着力表彰六朝文,并将佛经翻译纳入其内,有意疏通这两者的因缘。这不同于以文白的更迭来结构译经史的思路,他从佛经骈散杂糅的角度进入,试图将文体新变的可能限制在传统文章的畛域内,以显示文、言分合之外,“文”(而非“文学”)的内部逻辑及自我更新的能力。而《域外小说集》所代表的周氏兄弟早年的文言译作,据周作人追述,正是取法于六朝的译经文体。这种骈散相间的文体,与其直译乃至硬译的主张如何可能在文本中共存,却有待于深入到原文与译本之间逐字、逐句地探讨。本文将小说当作文章来解析,内涵着一个判断:所谓“域外小说”还是作为文章——不是关系群治的经世之文,而是执著于艺术之境的“醇文”——来经营的。

Zhou Zuoren promoted the Six Dynasties prose and put the translation of Buddhist scripture into them in order to strengthen the relationship between them. His effort was different from the idea of translation with classical and vernacular language mixed together to construct the translation of Buddhist scripture. From an angle of the parallel sentences mixed with prose, he tried to limit the possibility of changes of style in the field of traditional prose, in order to show the inner logic and self - renovation of classical language. The translations written in the classical language by Zhou Zuoren and Zhou Shuren in their early years, such as A Collection of Foreign Novels, had a style which followed the example of the translation of Buddhist scripture in the Six Dynasties. To solve the question how this kind of style and the viewpoint of literal translation did coexist in the text, we need to read the original text and the translation word by word. In this article, the author analyzed the novels as the prose because of a judgment that Zhou Zuoren wrote those so-called foreign stories as prose, not the ones about how to manage state affairs but literary works with an artistic spirit.